Capitalism traps us through an incomplete satisfaction that compels us after the new, the better, and the more.

This interview is compelling: http://newbooksnetwork.com/todd-mcgowan-capitalism-and-desire-the-psychic-cost-of-free-markets-columbia-up-2016/

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/capitalism-and-desire/9780231178723

I was most hooked by the idea that capitalists are not self-interested. If we were self-interested, we would have socialism and environmental protections

Our paralysis about global warming is proof of our lack of self interest in our actions

Instead we get pleasure from destruction

But also it's not the having we seek, it's the seeking, the almost having, the moment of opening the box. Once we have the object we are invariably disappointed.

Not sure if I'm getting this exactly right, but I think maybe the idea is we may have a deep need to seek (a survival instinct). Once we have something, why act at all? We would just sit on the couch all day. So the drive to seek is stronger than the pleasure of having. Capitalism lays itself on top of this deep need by channeling that seeking and desire into buying and attaining money and objects. But the more you have, the more unsatisfied you are, the more you seek

@Latkes My understanding is that the major predictor of happiness in a society is equality. It doesn't matter what you have (beyond a certain minimum) anywhere near as much as it matters how much less you have than someone else. The need to seek seems like something that works when we do it in groups, and less so when we do it alone. Which might account for class formation in psychological, rather than economic, terms.